'We needed to remember these men by finding out who they were': New WW1 book sheds light on Kilkenny soldiers

Private Kieran Phelan of Walkin Street, Kilkenny was just 21 years old when he was killed in action on May 27, 1915.

The young soldier who rests in the Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery in France was one of around 35,000 Irish soldiers killed in the Great War, but his story is particularly noteworthy as his father, Private Patrick Phelan, fell on the battlefield less than two weeks earlier, causing loss in two generations of a Kilkenny family in quick succession.

This is one of many local anecdotes to be uncovered in Mons Star to the Royal Irish Regiment, a new and unique historical publication by Mary Anne Maher and Larry Scallan which researches the 1,928 men of the regiment who received the ‘Mons’ Star medal in 1914.

The regiment was first raised in 1684 and fought in everything from the Nine Years War to the Battle of Bunker Hill in the American War of Independence before Clonmel became its base in 1873. 

Because of the location of the depot at the outbreak of the First World War, the regiment was predominantly recruited from Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford, with 175 soldiers in the book having an address in Kilkenny.

For Mary Anne and Larry, their interest in the regiment stems directly from their ancestors.

Both had a great-granduncle killed in an engagement with the German Army at Le Pilly, France, in the early stages of the war.

“My great-granduncle John Brennan was killed in October 1914 and I live in his house so it’s always something that’s been there,” Mary Anne explains.

“He was killed on October 19 and his wife gave birth to twins on the same day. Both twins were dead by October 25 so she lost her husband and her only two children in the same week. The First World War has always been a strong presence in our home because of that.”

“And I’m the complete opposite because my family had really forgotten about my great-granduncle Private John Redmond,” Larry adds.

A conversation between the two at a commemoration for the centenary of the armistice in 2018 led to the question being asked of where the men who served in the Royal Irish Regiment would have been from and where they resided after the war.

The research began during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 where the historians searched through 11,300 medal index cards to identify the men in the regiment who were entitled to the 1914 ‘Mons’ Star medal, awarded to all soldiers who served in France or Belgium between the declaration of war on August 5 and the end of the First Battle of Ypres on November 22.

“It was felt from the discussion in 2018 that we needed to remember these men by at least finding out who they were,” Larry recalls.

“Our publication is a nominal roll of 1,928 soldiers with their number, rank and name, age, date of birth, their date of death if we could find it, medals awarded and pre-war service for Boer War veterans.”

“So from our book, if somebody has an interest, you can research your ancestor to a point, and then you can contact us to get the additional details that we have on file. We had to turn this into a research document, telling a story at the same time,” he adds.

Mons Star to the Royal Irish Regiment is the culmination of around five years of work, and the myriad of new information and stories uncovered in the research includes the likes of a soldier who died in action and wasn’t remembered by the Commonwealth War Grave Commission. Mary Anne and Larry made an application on his behalf and were able to have him recognised as a casualty of the war more than a century on.

The gargantuan project involved the research of more than 140,000 documents and once all the ‘Mons’ Star recipients were identified the work was split to try and piece together the lives of the men themselves.

“Every soldier becomes a single investigation, so I would exhaust the military records and once I had all that information, Mary Anne did the social side of it,” Larry outlines.

“That included the 1901, 1911 and military censuses, all those things could give you an address and that was gold dust to us. Once you got an address, you were bringing a man home to his parish, to his town, to his village and that was the most important thing because in 110 years nobody had ever done that before,” he adds.

The detective work required to compile the collection of all the men from Private John Beehan of Urlingford, the youngest Kilkenny casualty at 18 years old in 1915, to Private William Foote, the last survivor with a Kilkenny address who died in 1979, was in equal parts challenging and rewarding as there was no reference point for Mary Anne and Larry to work from.

“Nobody we know of has done this, so it isn’t like you could say "here’s Kilkenny Families and the Great War”, there are books out there but nothing in the sense of what we were trying to do,” Mary Anne says.

“It was a really enjoyable experience because we knew that we were going to have something unique at the end,” she adds.

The book was launched at The Home Rule Club in Kilkenny on the 103rd anniversary of the disbanding of the regiment and although it has already been published, Larry hopes that Mons Star to the Royal Irish Regiment will become a living document as more information becomes available in the future.

“You could spend ten minutes researching a soldier, find everything, and then the next one could take four hours and I’d have to move on,” he says.

“There are gaps, but they might be filled in the future. The 1926 census from Ireland is going to be an important one released next year,” he concludes.

The book can be ordered at royalirishregiment.monsstar@gmail.com.